Combining Science and Social Studies Methods classes lends
power to teaching combined content topics in teacher education courses. Our science/social studies methods teacher
education candidates used topics from the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2012 annual meeting theme: “Flattening the World: Building a Global Knowledge Society” (http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2012/program/theme/)
to build interdisciplinary lesson plans.
Each lesson plan had a “technology in the classroom” component which required
our teacher candidates to incorporate Jing into their plans. Jing is a screen
and voice capturing software available on all lab computers and available free
for download at this site: http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html
 |
| Tim Gerber |
To prepare students for working with Jing, we scheduled the
first Jing session in a computer lab with a technology trainer from Academic Technology Services, in IT at UW-L. This session was conducted to allow our
teacher candidates to “play around” with the software. The second Jing session was for our
teacher candidates to work together on their connected lesson plans. At the end of the semester, each
student group presented their Science/Social Studies Integrated Curriculum
lesson plans to the entire class including their Jing-based materials. Among
the environmentally-related lesson plan AAAS topics developed by the students
were biodiversity, population, global health, agriculture, renewable energy,
development, climate change, and economics.
 |
| Greg Wegner |
Combining Science and Social Studies Methods classes was a
valuable experience for our teacher candidates from both the integrated
curriculum development and technology in the classroom perspective.
Submitted by Tim Gerber, Biology and Greg Wegner, History
Submitted by Tim Gerber, Biology and Greg Wegner, History
